On 30/04/2015 14:12, harryagain wrote:
"Simon Brown" wrote in message
...


"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 29/04/15 22:04, Simon Brown wrote:
Hasn't failed in Norway. They have done much better
with their socialised oil and gas system than Britain has.

when you have a population as low as they have and as much oil/gas as
they have you can afford socialism. Till the oil runs out....

Not that they are even socialist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Solberg

Of course they are when the government owns
the oil and gas and much of the hydro industries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Resources


Norway hasn't been socialist for years.

Maybe, but a lot of utilities are a state monopoly.

On 30/04/15 16:12, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 30/04/15 15:10, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 30/04/15 12:08, Simon Brown wrote:
Viable flying machines are a serious breakthrough.

No they are not,. They *were* perhaps a serious breakthrough, but
really all the breakthrough was in fact the petrol internal combustion
engine. Once that existed aircraft were inevitable.

Yes, because of the power to weight ratio - something that fluffy bunny
halfwits cannot comprehend. From time to time, also, one hears of
people imagining we might put steam engines in cars. It doesn't occur
to them to wonder why steam engines are so large.

they aren't. I saw a mamod steam engine smaller than a shoe box...:-)

Humph. I thought the condenser size was the issue.

dont need a condenser if you only want 7% efficiency :-)


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 30/04/15 18:51, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
wrote:

his computer work but he did invent it. His plans, when followed
later, worked.

Yes, feasible but not practical, because the necessary metallurgy did
not exist at the time.

Oh, the metallurgy did, just not the machine tools


Turing's machine was a theoretical concept till the exigencies of war
meant the impossible had to be attempted and under run valves proved
nearly good enough.

But it took the transistor and the integrated circuit and y6hings like
electron beam diffusion to make the sort of CPU chip we see today.

NOT garage level stuff.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 30/04/2015 12:18, newshound wrote:
On 28/04/2015 20:59, John Rumm wrote:
On 28/04/2015 16:38, Tim w wrote:
This could really change a lot of things

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/audi-create...-water-1498524



Since it requires a process temperature of 800 deg C it would be an
ideal partner for a LFTR reactor, since they can achieve the high
process temperatures directly.


Not green enough! Surely needs one of those Spanish / California type
focussed solar arrays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

Yup, that would work... so long as you don;t mind popping over to spain
for for your next fill up ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:02:27 UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/04/15 18:51, Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
nt wrote:

his computer work but he did invent it. His plans, when followed
later, worked.

Yes, feasible but not practical, because the necessary metallurgy did
not exist at the time.

Oh, the metallurgy did, just not the machine tools

everything necessary existed, read the history. Babbage's character was a big problem.


But it took the transistor and the integrated circuit and y6hings like
electron beam diffusion to make the sort of CPU chip we see today.

NOT garage level stuff.

Obviously things requiring massive investment arent done in a garage.


NT

wrote in message
...
On Thursday, 30 April 2015 12:08:40 UTC+1, Simon Brown wrote:
"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 20:44:03 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:



"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 08:39, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 06:12, wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 18:41:38 UTC+1, harry wrote:

Advancement rarely comes by accident these days.
Inventors "stand on the shoulders" of their predeccesors.
So if you have no education, you are unlikely to invent anything.
Or even have an idea of what's possible.

yes

Virtually all the easy stuff has been found out.
No more inventions in garden sheds these days.

utter rubbish

Sadly not true.

Fraid so.

At least in terms of major break throughs.

That isn't true either, most obviously with apps.

Do you really thing apps are a serious breakthrough?

Some of them are, most obviously with an app that can for
example listen to a bird call and show you what bird it is.

Inventing the transistor was a serious breakthrough.

Yes.

Not coding up a bit of java

That can be too when it does something that hasn't been done before.

ROTFLMA! It seems you have no concept of what is meant by a serious
breakthrough!

We'll see...

Are you going to discover the Higgs boson in your shed,

A viable flying machine was produced in someone's shed.

or confine a plasma to achieve nuclear
fusion, or understand Dark Matter?

Viable flying machines are a serious breakthrough.

As time goes on it gets ever harder to invent 'a serious breakthrough,'

I'm not convinced. The personal computer is in fact just as
much a serious breakthrough as a viable flying machine was.

DNA was clearly a serious breakthrough by any measure.

whatever exactly that means. So the percentage of lone inventors falls,

Even that is arguable. Yes, the detail has changed with us not
seeing as many small mechanical inventions as we used to,
but in fact what we have seen is the lone inventors keeping
on doing that in other areas, particularly with apps now.

That change has been seen in the past too with lone inventors
mostly inventing mechanical stuff that helps with agriculture
and domestic stuff in the past, moving on to electronics, radio
and stuff like that, and then on to the personal computer and
now on to apps.

but not to zero. Many inventions are concepts rather than brute force
trial,

Yes, even the wheel is that.

and significant concepts can still be and are still produced by single
minds.

Yes, particularly with apps now.

The computer is a geat example - although long in the past, it was
a piece of elemental conceptual thinking that changed history.

And is just one of the things that did that, with everything from
plant and animal breeding through to firearms, fire itself, tools,
language, myths, legends all sorts of things doing that as well.

Its construction is an example of where
money is required, but its invention is not.

Very little money is needed with apps now.

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
. ..

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Whoever did the telephone produced a significant breakthrough too.

In article , Jethro_uk
writes
On Tue, 28 Apr 2015 16:38:16 +0100, Tim w wrote:

This could really change a lot of things

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/audi-create...-future-using-
just-carbon-dioxide-water-1498524

Could that be a use for wind turbine electricity ?
Well it's no damned use for anything else.
--
bert

On 30/04/15 21:19, Simon Brown wrote:


"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

So did IBM, clive sinclair - or chris curry - and a dozen other people
who worked out what a low cost 8 bit processor made by a VERY big
company could do. When hooked up to a mass produyced TV made by another
VERY big company.


Whoever did the telephone produced a significant breakthrough too.

Not recently - none of it. Those days are GONE.



--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"Simon Brown" wrote in message
...


"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 29/04/15 22:04, Simon Brown wrote:
Hasn't failed in Norway. They have done much better
with their socialised oil and gas system than Britain has.

when you have a population as low as they have and as much oil/gas as
they have you can afford socialism. Till the oil runs out....

Not that they are even socialist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Solberg

Of course they are when the government owns
the oil and gas and much of the hydro industries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Resources


Norway hasn't been socialist for years.

Still is when the government owns the oil and gas and
much of the hydro industries and the largest bank.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway

The state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, such
as the
strategic petroleum sector (Statoil and Aker Solutions), hydroelectric
energy
production (Statkraft), aluminium production (Norsk Hydro), the largest
Norwegian bank (DnB NOR), and telecommunication provider (Telenor).
Through these big companies, the government controls approximately
30% of the stock values at the Oslo Stock Exchange. When non-listed
companies are included, the state has even higher share in ownership
(mainly from direct oil license ownership).

"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"Simon Brown" wrote in message
...


"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 20:44:03 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:



"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 08:39, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 06:12, wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 18:41:38 UTC+1, harry wrote:

Advancement rarely comes by accident these days.
Inventors "stand on the shoulders" of their predeccesors.
So if you have no education, you are unlikely to invent anything.
Or even have an idea of what's possible.

yes

Virtually all the easy stuff has been found out.
No more inventions in garden sheds these days.

utter rubbish

Sadly not true.

Fraid so.

At least in terms of major break throughs.

That isn't true either, most obviously with apps.

Do you really thing apps are a serious breakthrough?

Some of them are, most obviously with an app that can for
example listen to a bird call and show you what bird it is.

Inventing the transistor was a serious breakthrough.

Yes.

Not coding up a bit of java

That can be too when it does something that hasn't been done before.

ROTFLMA! It seems you have no concept of what is meant by a serious
breakthrough!

We'll see...

Are you going to discover the Higgs boson in your shed,

A viable flying machine was produced in someone's shed.

or confine a plasma to achieve nuclear
fusion, or understand Dark Matter?

Viable flying machines are a serious breakthrough.

That was quite some time ago.

Yes, but since then Wozniak did something even more useful in his shed.

And while Visicalc wasn’t produced in a shed,
it was even more of a serious breakthrough.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Rod Speed wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote
Rod Speed wrote

It's either diesel or it isn't.

There is a difference between making
it from crude oil and from CO2.

I refer you to the sentence below.

Or perhaps you consider alcohol or hydrogen that
a petrol engine can run on just synthetic petrol?

I make an obscene gesture in your general direction, as always.

Collins GEM English Dictionary
diesel n. ~diesel oil fuel obtained from petroleum distillation.

Pity about biodiesel.

Thought even you might notice that's a different name.

Only so you can see that its produced differently.

A fuel made from other than that may well
work in a CI engine, but isn't diesel oil.

If its chemically identical, it is.

And, of course, the whole point of
this is they ain't chemically identical.

It can be when it doesn’t come from crude oil.

Which is why it's wrong to call it diesel.

Then you had better set fire to yourself in 'protest' or sumfin.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 11:44, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 08:39, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 06:12, wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 18:41:38 UTC+1, harry wrote:

Advancement rarely comes by accident these days.
Inventors "stand on the shoulders" of their predeccesors.
So if you have no education, you are unlikely to invent anything.
Or even have an idea of what's possible.

yes

Virtually all the easy stuff has been found out.
No more inventions in garden sheds these days.

utter rubbish

Sadly not true.

Fraid so.

At least in terms of major break throughs.

That isn't true either, most obviously with apps.

Do you really thing apps are a serious breakthrough?

Some of them are, most obviously with an app that can for
example listen to a bird call and show you what bird it is.

**** me that is really going to solve the world problems.,

We aren't discussing solving the world's problems, we
are discussing whether invention still happens today.

Visicalc is a better example for solving some of the world's
problems and is another relatively recent invention.

One starving man to another 'Ere that's a blackbird, notta thrush'
'**** off so I can die in peace'


Inventing the transistor was a serious breakthrough.

Yes.

Not coding up a bit of java

That can be too when it does something that hasnt been done before.

I can type the keys here and make your computer spell
Catfartinabasketaquilidocious. That's never been done before.

Do I get a Nobel Prize?

Dan Bricklin didnt get one. Arafat did tho.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Don't be a sap. He wasn't even the first and there were various others
at the time. He made it slightly better, perhaps slightly more easy to
use for the averagely technical. I speak as one who owned an Apple ][
for a while in 1978 and saw one or two Imsai 8080s at work at the time.

The personal computer was, as with powered flight, inevitable, once it
had been worked out how to make the first integrated circuits. The path
to sufficient miniaturisation for all the components of a viable
computer to be on a small number of circuit boards was assured.

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.


I thought Oregon Scientific were first?

On 30/04/15 22:25, Simon Brown wrote:

And while Visicalc wasnt produced in a shed,
it was even more of a serious breakthrough.

You have to be kidding.

A serious breakthrough would be if you developed intelligence


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 30/04/15 22:44, Simon Brown wrote:


We aren't discussing solving the world's problems, we
are discussing whether invention still happens today.

Visicalc is a better example for solving some of the world's
problems and is another relatively recent invention.


No we were discussing whether you could do a SERIOUS breakthrough in a shed.

So far you have come up with trivia - profitable, but still trivia.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 12:55, Simon Brown wrote:

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.


No he didn't.

he just packaged up some chips in a rather ckueful way.

And that produced an affordable personal computer
and so was a significant breakthrough.

And if you don't like that one, VisiCalc certainly
was a significant breakthrough a bit later than that.

Sikorsky's helicopter 75 years ago. Hardly qualify for 'these days'!
Anything else is derivative.

Not with apps.

Oh **** OFF with your 'apps'

No thanks. It's an obvious example of what isn't derivative.

Apps are just ideas expressed in software.

Still not derivative with something like VisiCalc.

There is nothing new there at all,

There was with VisiCalc.

just filling in the corners as the last few areas that haven't been coded
to death get coded to death.

Not with VisiCalc. Or with Linux either.

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 21:55:37 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:



"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 21:08:27 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:



"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
m...
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 20:44:03 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:



"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 08:39, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 06:12, wrote:
On Wednesday, 29 April 2015 18:41:38 UTC+1, harry wrote:

Advancement rarely comes by accident these days.
Inventors "stand on the shoulders" of their predeccesors.
So if you have no education, you are unlikely to invent
anything.
Or even have an idea of what's possible.

yes

Virtually all the easy stuff has been found out.
No more inventions in garden sheds these days.

utter rubbish

Sadly not true.

Fraid so.

At least in terms of major break throughs.

That isn't true either, most obviously with apps.

Do you really thing apps are a serious breakthrough?

Some of them are, most obviously with an app that can for
example listen to a bird call and show you what bird it is.

Inventing the transistor was a serious breakthrough.

Yes.

Not coding up a bit of java

That can be too when it does something that hasn't been done before.

ROTFLMA! It seems you have no concept of what is meant by a serious
breakthrough!

We'll see...

Are you going to discover the Higgs boson in your shed,

A viable flying machine was produced in someone's shed.

or confine a plasma to achieve nuclear
fusion, or understand Dark Matter?

Viable flying machines are a serious breakthrough.

To quote Harry from further up in this thread:
Virtually all the easy stuff has been found out.
No more inventions in garden sheds these days.

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.

Sikorsky's helicopter 75 years ago. Hardly qualify for 'these days'!
Anything else is derivative.

Not with apps.

The only Wozniak that I'm aware of is Stephen Wozniak of Apple fame.
According to his Wiki entry, the only thing he's done with aircraft is
to crash one.

I didn't way his had anything to do with aircraft.

So obviously not him

It was him.

or it would have been mentioned.
So who then, and what did he do?

Read the wiki entry.

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 30/04/15 12:08, Simon Brown wrote:
Viable flying machines are a serious breakthrough.

No they are not,. They *were* perhaps a serious breakthrough, but really
all the breakthrough was in fact the petrol internal combustion engine.
Once that existed aircraft were inevitable.

Yes, because of the power to weight ratio - something that fluffy bunny
halfwits cannot comprehend. From time to time, also, one hears of
people imagining we might put steam engines in cars. It doesn't occur
to them to wonder why steam engines are so large.

For powered flight, it also just required a bit of imagination to
realise that one had to copy gliding birds rather than birds flapping
their wings. AISB, people probably knew that such things were possible
in principle at least 100 years before the Wright Brothers. The trouble
with Mr Brown is that he seems to think that no one considered flying
machines

Never said anything like that.

and suddenly the Wright Brothers had this lightbulb moment and next thing
you knew, there was a working example.

Or that either.

Whereas in fact people had been trying, on and off, for years.

Duh. VIABLE flying machines are a serious breakthrough
and that didnt just involve a decent power to weight ratio.

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:

In article ,
charles wrote:
And, of course, the whole point of this is they ain't chemically
identical. Which is why it's wrong to call it diesel.

but - "diesel" is the "comprssion ignition" cycle* that the engine runs
with. It's not the fuel used - except by association.

- named after Herr Diesel its inventor.

Quite. And one of the beauties of the CI engine is it can run on a variety
of fuels. So are we just to call them all by the same name?

If so, why bother with the name biodiesel if it is just plain diesel?

We bother with the name biodiesel so that we can all feel warm and
virtuous, safe in the knowledge that it's everyone *else* who's ****ing
up the planet, not us.

The name is used indicate how it was produced.

Just like synthetic lubricating oils are named
like that to distinguish them from mineral oils.

All biodiesel does is cause starvation.

Doesnt cause starvation in the modern first world which
has a quite different problem, an obesity epidemic which
is the result of the exact opposite of starvation.

"Fredxxx" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/2015 14:12, harryagain wrote:
"Simon Brown" wrote in message
...


"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 29/04/15 22:04, Simon Brown wrote:
Hasn't failed in Norway. They have done much better
with their socialised oil and gas system than Britain has.

when you have a population as low as they have and as much oil/gas as
they have you can afford socialism. Till the oil runs out....

Not that they are even socialist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erna_Solberg

Of course they are when the government owns
the oil and gas and much of the hydro industries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Resources


Norway hasn't been socialist for years.

Maybe, but a lot of utilities are a state monopoly.

And the biggest bank is state owned too.

Can't get any more socialist than that.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 21:19, Simon Brown wrote:


"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

So did IBM, clive sinclair - or chris curry - and a dozen other people who
worked out what a low cost 8 bit processor made by a VERY big company
could do. When hooked up to a mass produyced TV made by another VERY big
company.

Sure, I never said that what he did was unique, just that
it was a useful advance on what we had before he did that.

Whoever did the telephone produced a significant breakthrough too.

Not recently - none of it. Those days are GONE.

No they are not, we keep seeing significant
advances like with VisiCalc and other useful apps.

We have just seen useful advances with mobile phone OSs too.

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
...
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
m...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Don't be a sap. He wasn't even the first and there were various others
at the time. He made it slightly better, perhaps slightly more easy to
use for the averagely technical. I speak as one who owned an Apple ][
for a while in 1978 and saw one or two Imsai 8080s at work at the time.

The personal computer was, as with powered flight, inevitable, once it
had been worked out how to make the first integrated circuits. The path
to sufficient miniaturisation for all the components of a viable
computer to be on a small number of circuit boards was assured.

Just because powered flight was inevitable doesnt stop it being a
serious breakthrough that eventually ended up with stuff like the A380.

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.

Sure, but other stuff like VisiCalc was too. So was Linux.

The point is that hasn't stopped, it just happens in different areas now.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 22:25, Simon Brown wrote:

And while Visicalc wasnt produced in a shed,
it was even more of a serious breakthrough.

You have to be kidding.

No. Not with Linux either.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 22:44, Simon Brown wrote:


We aren't discussing solving the world's problems, we
are discussing whether invention still happens today.

Visicalc is a better example for solving some of the world's
problems and is another relatively recent invention.


No we were discussing whether you could do a SERIOUS breakthrough in a
shed.

That was just one of the things being discussed
and Woz did that in a shed/garage.

So far you have come up with trivia - profitable, but still trivia.

VisiCalc and Linux are nothing even remotely like trivia.

And neither were profitable.

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 12:55, Simon Brown wrote:

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.

No he didn't.

he just packaged up some chips in a rather ckueful way.

And that produced an affordable personal computer

No more or less so than other machines available at the time and before.

Sure, I didnt say it was unique, just that it was done in a shed/garage.

It was more convenient to use, as it has an integrated keyboard
and all you needed to do was plug in a TV. But that is just adapting
existing technology to the market, rather than anything really new.

That is true of most significant breakthroughs. It isnt often you get
something radically new like DNA or the transistor or radio for example.

Even the car was more of an improvement over the carriage
than something radically new, just a different power system.

On 30/04/2015 08:44, Simon Brown wrote:


"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
....
The difference is that too many of today's idiots believe in magic or
that a bit of development ought to allow us to have solar panels that
could go on the roof of the car or a plane's wings so that the
car/plane needs no other energy source.

Well one already exists.

Not one that can carry several hundred passengers.

What you don't realise is that if some technology could be found to
reduce drag sufficiently, then it wuld be easily possible.

That isn't going to happen now, we have been
doing planes and cars for too long now....

There are ways to reduce drag, such as a micro perforated skin with
suction to remove boundary layer turbulence and create laminar flow.
However, all aircraft are a collection of compromises and that
particular technology isn't really practical, even on conventionally
powered aircraft.


--
Colin Bignell

In article ,
Rod Speed wrote:
Thought even you might notice that's a different name.

Only so you can see that its produced differently.

That is the only difference?

You're being even more stupid that usual. Something I didn't think
possible.

--
*War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Rod Speed wrote:
Thought even you might notice that's a different name.

Only so you can see that its produced differently.

That is the only difference?

That is the reason it isn't called diesel.

On 30/04/15 23:11, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 12:55, Simon Brown wrote:

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.


No he didn't.

he just packaged up some chips in a rather ckueful way.

And that produced an affordable personal computer
and so was a significant breakthrough.

And if you don't like that one, VisiCalc certainly
was a significant breakthrough a bit later than that.

Sikorsky's helicopter 75 years ago. Hardly qualify for 'these days'!
Anything else is derivative.

Not with apps.

Oh **** OFF with your 'apps'

No thanks. It's an obvious example of what isn't derivative.

Apps are just ideas expressed in software.

Still not derivative with something like VisiCalc.

There is nothing new there at all,

There was with VisiCalc.

just filling in the corners as the last few areas that haven't been
coded to death get coded to death.

Not with VisiCalc. Or with Linux either.

You are absurd. Linux was nothing more than Unix without commercial
strings attached.



--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 01/05/15 00:42, Nightjar "cpb"@ wrote:
On 30/04/2015 08:44, Simon Brown wrote:


"harryagain" wrote in message
...

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
...
The difference is that too many of today's idiots believe in magic or
that a bit of development ought to allow us to have solar panels that
could go on the roof of the car or a plane's wings so that the
car/plane needs no other energy source.

Well one already exists.

Not one that can carry several hundred passengers.

What you don't realise is that if some technology could be found to
reduce drag sufficiently, then it wuld be easily possible.

That isn't going to happen now, we have been
doing planes and cars for too long now....

There are ways to reduce drag, such as a micro perforated skin with
suction to remove boundary layer turbulence and create laminar flow.
However, all aircraft are a collection of compromises and that
particular technology isn't really practical, even on conventionally
powered aircraft.


without drag, there would be no lift. The same viscosity that is
responsible for drag is what allows lift to be generated



--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 30/04/2015 22:27, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Don't be a sap. He wasn't even the first and there were various others
at the time. He made it slightly better, perhaps slightly more easy to
use for the averagely technical. I speak as one who owned an Apple ][
for a while in 1978 and saw one or two Imsai 8080s at work at the time.

The personal computer was, as with powered flight, inevitable, once it
had been worked out how to make the first integrated circuits. The path
to sufficient miniaturisation for all the components of a viable
computer to be on a small number of circuit boards was assured.

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.


Apple was lucky, they had an application that people wanted enough to
pay for. Others at the time lacked that one bit of software.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 23:11, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 12:55, Simon Brown wrote:

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.


No he didn't.

he just packaged up some chips in a rather ckueful way.

And that produced an affordable personal computer
and so was a significant breakthrough.

And if you don't like that one, VisiCalc certainly
was a significant breakthrough a bit later than that.

Sikorsky's helicopter 75 years ago. Hardly qualify for 'these days'!
Anything else is derivative.

Not with apps.

Oh **** OFF with your 'apps'

No thanks. It's an obvious example of what isn't derivative.

Apps are just ideas expressed in software.

Still not derivative with something like VisiCalc.

There is nothing new there at all,

There was with VisiCalc.

just filling in the corners as the last few areas that haven't been
coded to death get coded to death.

Not with VisiCalc. Or with Linux either.

You are absurd.

We'll see...

Linux was nothing more than Unix without commercial strings attached.

It is in fact much more than that.

And that isn't true of VisiCalc anyway.

On 01/05/15 08:18, Dennis@home wrote:
On 30/04/2015 22:27, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Don't be a sap. He wasn't even the first and there were various others
at the time. He made it slightly better, perhaps slightly more easy to
use for the averagely technical. I speak as one who owned an Apple ][
for a while in 1978 and saw one or two Imsai 8080s at work at the time.

The personal computer was, as with powered flight, inevitable, once it
had been worked out how to make the first integrated circuits. The path
to sufficient miniaturisation for all the components of a viable
computer to be on a small number of circuit boards was assured.

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.


Apple was lucky, they had an application that people wanted enough to
pay for. Others at the time lacked that one bit of software.


Apple were lucky. They were in the USA. The same product all other
things being equal will sell ten times as many items as in the UK.

Without needing to be exported. Or be translated into 15 different
languages.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

On 01/05/2015 00:23, Simon Brown wrote:

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.

Sure, but other stuff like VisiCalc was too. So was Linux.

Linux was and still is just a copy of something that already existed,
its hardly a breakthrough to copy something.
Open source is more of a breakthrough and some of the software produced
because of it could be a breakthrough, Linux isn't.

On 01/05/15 08:20, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 23:11, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 12:55, Simon Brown wrote:

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later than
that.


No he didn't.

he just packaged up some chips in a rather ckueful way.

And that produced an affordable personal computer
and so was a significant breakthrough.

And if you don't like that one, VisiCalc certainly
was a significant breakthrough a bit later than that.

Sikorsky's helicopter 75 years ago. Hardly qualify for 'these days'!
Anything else is derivative.

Not with apps.

Oh **** OFF with your 'apps'

No thanks. It's an obvious example of what isn't derivative.

Apps are just ideas expressed in software.

Still not derivative with something like VisiCalc.

There is nothing new there at all,

There was with VisiCalc.

just filling in the corners as the last few areas that haven't been
coded to death get coded to death.

Not with VisiCalc. Or with Linux either.

You are absurd.

We'll see...

Linux was nothing more than Unix without commercial strings attached.

It is in fact much more than that.


Good grief. here is an idiot telling me my business.


And that isn't true of VisiCalc anyway.


--
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for the
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. €“ Erwin Knoll

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 1 May 2015 08:13:58 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:



"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 21:55:37 +1000, "Simon Brown"
wrote:


The only Wozniak that I'm aware of is Stephen Wozniak of Apple fame.
According to his Wiki entry, the only thing he's done with aircraft is
to crash one.

I didn't say his had anything to do with aircraft.

So you talk in riddles.

Everyone else understood what I meant there.

As I said, you are a smart-arse, and you have no
concept of what is meant by a serious breakthrough.

I didn't say his was a serious breakthrough, just
that he did what he did in his shed/garage.

Sure, your hero Wozniak

He isn't my hero. The Wright brothers aren't either.

was a smart guy, but he wasn't unique;

No one ever said he was unique, just that he did what
he did in his shed/garage, providing that the claim that
it isn't done by individuals in their sheds anymore is wrong.

there were plenty of clever people assembling chips,
sharing ideas and building microcomputers at that time*.

Never said otherwise.

There was nothing unique about him,

Never said there was.

or anything in the way of a serious breakthrough that any of them did.

Never said there was.

The serious breakthrough was the transistor
itself, which made everything else possible.

Having fun thrashing that straw man ?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...onal_computers and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club

"Dennis@home" wrote in message
web.com...
On 30/04/2015 22:27, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Tim Streater" wrote in message
.. .
In article , Simon Brown
wrote:

"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...

The Wright brothers were over a century ago.

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than that.

What breakthrough was that, then?

He worked out how to make a personal computer
affordable by almost anyone who wanted to have one.

Don't be a sap. He wasn't even the first and there were various others
at the time. He made it slightly better, perhaps slightly more easy to
use for the averagely technical. I speak as one who owned an Apple ][
for a while in 1978 and saw one or two Imsai 8080s at work at the time.

The personal computer was, as with powered flight, inevitable, once it
had been worked out how to make the first integrated circuits. The path
to sufficient miniaturisation for all the components of a viable
computer to be on a small number of circuit boards was assured.

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.


Apple was lucky, they had an application that people wanted enough to pay
for. Others at the time lacked that one bit of software.

It wasnt one bit of software that saw Apple succeed.

"Dennis@home" wrote in message
web.com...
On 01/05/2015 00:23, Simon Brown wrote:

I'd say the real breakthroughs there the transistor, and after that the
integrated circuit.

Sure, but other stuff like VisiCalc was too. So was Linux.

Linux was and still is just a copy of something that already existed,

No it was not.

its hardly a breakthrough to copy something.

Linux isn't a copy of anything.

Open source is more of a breakthrough

And that is what Linux is.

and some of the software produced because of it could be a breakthrough,
Linux isn't.

Wrong.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 01/05/15 08:20, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 23:11, Simon Brown wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
On 30/04/15 12:55, Simon Brown wrote:

Yes, but Wozniak produced a significant breakthrough rather later
than
that.


No he didn't.

he just packaged up some chips in a rather ckueful way.

And that produced an affordable personal computer
and so was a significant breakthrough.

And if you don't like that one, VisiCalc certainly
was a significant breakthrough a bit later than that.

Sikorsky's helicopter 75 years ago. Hardly qualify for 'these days'!
Anything else is derivative.

Not with apps.

Oh **** OFF with your 'apps'

No thanks. It's an obvious example of what isn't derivative.

Apps are just ideas expressed in software.

Still not derivative with something like VisiCalc.

There is nothing new there at all,

There was with VisiCalc.

just filling in the corners as the last few areas that haven't been
coded to death get coded to death.

Not with VisiCalc. Or with Linux either.

You are absurd.

We'll see...

Linux was nothing more than Unix without commercial strings attached.

It is in fact much more than that.


Good grief. here is an idiot telling me my business.

When you get it wrong, everyone does.

And that isn't true of VisiCalc anyway.